ATLANTA — Every June, the NBA puts out a book introducing the year’s draft prospects. Although only 60 players are chosen, 124 players had their bio in the 2008 edition of the book.

Guard Anthony Morrow was not one of the names listed. Nor was he one of the names called on draft night.

“He didn’t really have a reaction,” his mom, Angela Morrow, said. “He just knew he was going to make it. He didn’t know how or who was going to pick him up. He knew in his heart he would play in the NBA. Anthony told me he was going to the league when he was like 10 years old.”

It’s been a little more than a month since Morrow fulfilled his own prophecy, bursting onto the stage like an angry girlfriend on “Jerry Springer.”

He’s come back to earth since Nov. 15, when he dropped 37 on the Los Angeles Clippers in his first career start, which stands as the most points by any player in his first start.

Still, Morrow has solidified himself as a promising young talent. Even so, it’s a minor mystery how he went undrafted, how 30 teams with multiple scouts deemed him not worth a pick.

The Warriors now benefit from what those close to Morrow already knew and what the rest of the league overlooked — that Morrow’s weaknesses have created his greatest strengths.

“You’ve just got to get to know guys a little bit better,” said Jerry Faulkner, Morrow’s high school coach at Charlotte Latin Academy. “Rather than measuring their height and all of those other things. There are some things that you’ve got to know about some guys. Anthony is one of them.”

Perhaps he was overlooked because the focus was on his tangibles, not his intangibles. Through the draft process, scouts and NBA executives saw his physical attributes and doubted his potential.

Morrow isn’t a superior athlete and — at 6-foot-5, 210 pounds — doesn’t have size worth drooling over. According to predraft scouting reports, strength was an issue for him, especially when it comes to getting all the way to the basket and finishing at the rim.

But what the talent evaluators likely didn’t see was his work ethic. Morrow learned about working hard from his mother. A single parent, she always had two or three jobs to support them. She worked at the DMV, ran her own cleaning service and styled hair. Morrow was right beside her much of the way, digesting her example of hustle.

“What I went through, he went through,” Angela said. “If I had to clean a building, he did, too. If I had to cut somebody’s grass to make some extra money, he did, too. I’ve always told him you could have whatever you want, just work hard. Don’t go out there steal and robbing. Just work hard. Work hard. Work hard.”

The Warriors’ staff has been floored by Morrow’s work ethic. They’ve even had to force him to rest at times. Such stories speckle his entire basketball career.

One winter when he was about 17, for example, a snow storm hit Charlotte, shutting down the schools. Morrow drove to the campus anyway, hoping somehow he’d find a way to get into the gym. He did, and played by himself for two hours before maintenance kicked him out.

“The guy is a gym rat,” Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said. “He is literally always in the gym. You always knew where to find him. We put our players on an individual work program, and he took to it. He loved it.”

Another reason Morrow was skipped over on draft day was that he was often overshadowed at Georgia Tech.

But Morrow has some experience as the man. He led Charlotte Latin Academy — a stout academic school that was a 45-minute drive from his home — to state championships his last two years in high school and was named North Carolina’s Mr. Basketball as a senior. He led the team in scoring as a sophomore and senior and left Georgia Tech with 1,400 points, which ranks 19th all time.

But his game wasn’t dominating enough to attract much attention. And it’s even harder to notice him when he’s next to attention grabbers such as Jarrett Jack, Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton.

But beneath this flaw lies another jewel: Morrow’s disposition. Those who know him rave about his humility, his team-first mentality, his coachability.

You won’t hear Morrow complain about not getting a scholarship from North Carolina or Wake Forest, his first choices. During draft night, he wasn’t moping about not being selected. He didn’t get a chip on his shoulder after his workouts didn’t produce the responses he preferred.

Morrow, once the golden child in the rotation, has fallen behind fellow sharpshooter Marco Belinelli in the rotation. Yet, Wednesday night in Indianapolis he was cheering as hard as anybody on the bench as Belinelli put up a career-high 21.

“The ones who feel like they’re being singled out and mistreated,” said Chris Mullin, the Warriors’ executive vice president of basketball operations, “those are the ones you don’t hear from anymore. He’s one who feels fortunate to be in this position and wants to take advantage of any opportunity.

“I think he’s like that anyway. He seems to me the type of kid that even if he was a first-round pick, he would be the same way. He didn’t have to not get drafted to be that way. That’s the way he is.”

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